CM1fan

Gee, I didn't know that mentioning earlier experience with a CMBO scenario involving the identical situation was out of bounds. Please tell me the rules for distinguishing unacceptable posts from acceptable ones. I'd hate to make this mistake again.

This was a CMBO scenario, and I tried it multiple times from the German side. I never achieved anything approaching Wittman's kill count, as Wittman's (my) Tiger always got swept away by the flood of arriving Brit tanks. What annoyed me most about the scenario was that some of the arriving Brit reinforcements seemed to materialize in positions they could not have reached without passing through terrain which was always in view of German forces. It felt like Star Trek's Scottie had beamed them down to their initial positions. I posted a few complaints about this, but nobody took me seriously.

The correct spelling is "bonsai". I don't know how they'd charge, but I expect agent orange or any other strong herbicide would stop them in their tracks.

I have some personal experience with US personnel being victims of US laid mines. I was an assistant operations officer in the 2d engineer battalion of the 2d infantry division during the summer of 1967. The second inf div then held a twenty mile wide section of the DMZ north of Seoul, ROK. The division commander directed our battalion to construct a fence behind the DMZ and showed us on a topo map where he wanted the fence built. My battalion commander told the division CG that the fence line went through US mine fields containing both AP and AT mines and asked if the fence line could be jogged around the fields. The CG said the line could not be changed. The AT mines contained a lot of metal and were easy to locate with mine detectors. The AP mines had so little metal that their detector signature was indistinguishable from normal background noise. The men clearing the fields found three AP mines, two at the cost of a foot each blown off by the found mine and the third by a man who heard and felt the mine's firing pin go off without the mine exploding. I knew the sergeant who had found the defective AP mine, and I bought him one of the many drinks he was given that evening at the NCO club.

I like the idea as well. +2, adding 1 to umlaut's previous post.

I'm 67, though I've stopped playing because of my frustration with my inability to play well. I greatly enjoyed CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK. I never mastered them, but they were fun to play either solitaire or PBEM whether I won or lost. CMBN, at least to me, requires a lot of work to play and provides very little fun as a reward for all the effort. I guess I'm now a lurker on the forum. I visit every week or so, and read through all the new threads in the hope of finding something that will reawaken my old excitement.

Just don't expect your free dropbox to work forever. My dropboxes stopped working after about six months. After that I couldn't log into my dropboxes. When I tried, dropbox told me it didn't recognize my password, and it wouldn't email my password to me or let me define a new one. When I asked dropbox customer support for help, they told me they only help paying customers. I can't afford the $60 / year price tag, so I dropped the service.

Thomm says "CMx2 I can fire up for half an hour whenever I have time and be confident that I actually finish a scenario." How can you possibly FINISH a scenario in half an hour? I've never been able to complete a CMx2 set up in less than an hour. A platoon size force involves at least four units, three squads and a platoon leader. Add in a few support weapons and dividing the squads into teams, and you've got a dozen or more units to place and issue commands. I haven't seen any scenarios smaller than that, and some are MUCH larger, with more than one hundred units to control.

I'd enjoy the loading music more if it played steadily and smoothly. On my iMac, the music frequently stops or, worse, has a raspy quality.

I well remember my Marder getting a first round hull penetration hit on my opponent's Sherman and which then absorbed SIX more penetration hits before it finally started burning. My opponent told me the three survivors of Sherman's crew abandoned the tank after the second hit, but my Marder fired off a third of its AT rounds before it ceased fire. Two turns later, two other Sherman's sighted the Marder. Their first shot sailed overhead, but it was quickly followed by two turret penetration hits which killed the Marder's entire crew.

As I recall, I cancelled the gun's movement and combat orders two minutes (turns) ago. The crew members continued packing up through the last minute (turn). I believe the deploy command was unavailable (greyed out) during the last command phase.

Don't ever give a Face command to an AT gun after the set up is over. I just wanted the AT gun's crew to watch for enemy approaching from a particular direction. Now the crew is "packing up", and I can't cancel the command. My blunder effectively removed the gun from my order of battle. My opponent can pick off gun crew members at his convenience, and I expect they won't even fire in self defense.

Wouldn't the crew of an AT gun have a fair idea of how visible they and their gun are to an approaching enemy? They can see what sort of terrain they're in. Obviously they can see their gun and how exposed it is. In most situations a member of the crew could walk a short distance in the expected direction of enemy approach, turn around, and see right away whether or not the gun is well concealed. I'm not very skilled in moving my viewpoint on the map and then TC head height above the ground to get a good idea about how visible my units are. As enemy units approach my positions, the AI can tell immediately whether my units are visible. How can I check this myself?

I've obviously missed this, but I certainly agree its utility is pretty worthless after the setup phase.

I'd be glad to use TRPs. Unfortunately Hill Shadow 5am is a scenario, and its designer provided no TRPs to the Brit player. (To be precise, I didn't see any Brit TRPs. Perhaps they existed, and I could have placed them anywhere on the map during the set up phase. I don't recall the designer's player notes mentioning TRPs.) How do you "delay 5/10/15 minutes when giving the firing order?" I've seen no such option, either during the set up phase or later in the scenario. Given that I can't target (except during set up) locations not visible to the spotter at the time of targeting, I don't see any advantage in increasing the delay to impact even more than the 16 minutes I already have to contend with.

In my experience with CM:BN, I can't do as you suggest. The first rounds of indirect fire ordered during set up land on the first turn. The fire can last for much of the game by ordering a slow rate of fire, but I've found no way to delay that fire by 15 or 20 minutes. I'd be happier if I could. The delay to impact seems reasonable (and historic), but CM:BN doesn't allow it. I'd also like to target areas presently out of sight by my spotters, but, again, CM:BN doesn't allow it. When I try to select a map location as a targeted impact location, that location has to be visible at the moment of targeting to the spotter. Map locations not visible to the spotter can't be targeted. I'm puzzled by many of the postings about CM:BN targeting when posters suggest I do things which CM:BN doesn't allow me to do. 1. Could somebody who can delay the initial impact of indirect fire targeted during set up please tell me exactly how to do it? 2. Could somebody who can target locations not visible to the spotter at the time of targeting please tell me exactly how to do it? (Question 2 obviously doesn't apply to targeting during set up. Its concern is with targeting when the scenario is under way.)

I wouldn't mind trying Battlefront's modern games, but neither the demo nor the full game will work on a Mac.

From my experience in CM2, you can't target anything your spotter can't see at the time of targeting. (Except, of course, on the first turn, when the anywhere on the map can be targeted.)

From what I recall of using indirect fire with 5 or 6 minute delays rather than 16, the "adjustments" take about the same amount of time as the original delay. I saw no point to them. I've also tried "emergency" missions. In my experience, time to impact is the same. If emergency speeded up time to impact, why would anyone use any other choice? From my experience with indirect fire, I stopped "buying" it in Quick Battles. Indirect fire assets are given my side in the Hill Shadow scenario, so I'm just trying to learn how best to use them.

Spoiler for "CW In the Shadow of the Hill 5am" ---- Although indirect fire with reasonable accuracy can be delivered anywhere on the map on the first turn, many CM:BN players agree to restrictions on how that capability may be used and don't allow or severely limit first turn indirect fire. I'm presently playing "CW In the Shadow of the Hill 5am" controlling the Brit side. I have a fair amount of artillery ammunition I'd like to fire at suspected German positions, but there's a 16 minute delay between requesting a fire mission and its rounds landing near the target. First, I have to advance a spotter with a radio into a position from which the spotter can see the ground where I want the shells to land. That may easily take 15 of the scenario's 45 minutes. Then I must keep the spotter and radio in that location for another 15 minutes so they can correct the fire if it's not immediately on target. (If the spotter is killed or the radio is knocked out during that 15 minute delay, the fire mission may be worse than useless, as the incoming HE rounds can kill my men rather then the enemy's.) In addition to HE shells, my artillery also has smoke and white phosphorus shells. I'd like to use the smoke and WP shells later than my HE shells, but why save them? By the time I can advance my spotter to a suitable location from which to call in that fire with its 16 minute delay to impact, the scenario will be over. Indirect fire artillery with long delays seem to be one-use weapons, except in scenarios running for hours.

You and I are in the same boat -- or should I instead say standing OUTSIDE the same Italian armored vehicle.

The video you see -- of guys crawling around foxholes, soldiers using binoculars to look at something five yards away, and men curled up in the fetal position -- are standard CM:BN video used whenever CM:BN decides a soldier is moving, spotting, or cowering. Sometimes that video matches what you'd expect the action to look like. Sometimes the video is hilariously wrong. The man you see outside the foxhole may only appear outside the foxhole because that's how the video shows him. The game engine may still be giving the man the foxhole's protection.

Thanks, Dog. I did go back to the options settings and fiddled with them. Only a couple (whose names I can't recall) seemed possibly to be related to my selection problem. I changed them to the faster (?) setting and played the next turn in my two email scenarios. Finally, I could select every one of my units by icon clicks during both the review and the command phases of the turn. If this continues to work in following turns, I'll consider my problem well and truly solved.

The "Last Defense" scenario is a favorite of mine, because it's a remake of the demo scenario of CMBO that got me to by CM1 many years ago. I played the German side of Last Defense against CM:BN's AI four times, each time trying a different starting arrangement for my forces. From the starting US positions, no US unit could see any of my units. The AI has ALWAYS fired its opening turn barrage on the starting locations of my troops. The only explanation I can find for the AI's unerring performance is that it knows where I've placed my units. It shouldn't, but it does. There's a simple test. Pick any scenario allowing variable initial set up outside the view of the enemy. Try different set ups, and observe where the AI bombards your troops. If my experience with "Last Defense" is typical, you'll see the AI make a lot of "lucky" guesses.

You make it sound so easy. Unfortunately, I find there are units, friendly and enemy, I can't select by clicking on the unit's floating icon or on the map location of the unit. I've complained about this in other threads, but nobody has given me an explanation of why this happens or instructions on how to prevent it from happening. I can sometimes select a desired friendly unit by selecting one unit that I can select and then using + (plus) and - (minus) to get to the unit I want. I believe I should be able to select any unit on the map when viewing a turn and certainly any friendly unit when giving orders. However, I can't. [i use an iMac. Unit selection may be more reliable on Windows machines.]